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MUMBAI:
The upcoming Entertainment Trends In America report
filed by NPD, a market research company, this year shows that
37 per cent of Americans will spend less on entertainment
products and devices in 2008 versus 2007.
Responding
to the company's survey, only 18 per cent anticipated that
they would be spending more this year on entertainment.
Just
under half of respondents to the survey (46 per cent) thought
they would spend about the same amount in 2008 as in the prior
year. Teens were the only age group where spending tipped
positive; 30 per cent believed they would spend more than
last year while 25 per cent thought they would spend less.
NPD
entertainment industry analyst Russ Crupnick said, “Entertainment
has historically been a reasonably recession-proof spending
category but in the 2001 recession there were a spate of new
gaming platforms. DVD was a relatively new format, and music
CDs hadn’t yet suffered the full onslaught of digital
downloading. It appears from our recent consumer surveys that
the current economic climate might be more challenging for
those who make and sell entertainment products.”
This
findings indicated that the industry would have to work harder
to successfully market entertainment content to this group
of consumers. The uncertain state of the U.S. economy and
worries about disposable income had little to do with these
consumers’ entertainment spending outlook.
Consumers
who demonstrated a negative outlook on future spending tended
to focus their reasoning on economic factors, such as the
increasing price of energy and food.
They
expressed a clear belief that the economy would get worse
and as a result their finances would be strained, thus causing
entertainment spending to suffer. This widely held opinion
pervaded all income groups, although predictably it was somewhat
less prevalent among households earning more than $100,000
per year.
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